Running Porteus 5.0rc3 on a ventoy USB

[Portland Z]

"When you refer to your old settings are you referring to those from your USB install of Porteus or the prior boot of the Ventoy Porteus system?"

I edited my last post.

On the APPEND line try changing the /mnt/sdc1/ to /dev/sdc1/.

Why? If the changes.dat is an empty file. (You said it's empty) Why should dev be better?

The Link to the Grub2 Plugin: "It should be noted that, when you use this plugin you should be familiar with grub2 and know exactly what you are doing."
I am not familiar with GRUB2 and don't know what I do - to be honest.
And I don't know, why Grub2 should be the problem. The ventoy menu is fine. I select porteus.iso an the Welcome Screen of porteus starts. All good.

When I boot my ISOs any config changes I need or files that I want I add outside the ISO and to my grub2 menus. And my grub2 menus are manually adjusted outside of the app that created them. On my sda6 drive I have my ISOs and my changes and Module folders, along with a bunch of others,

Ok. That is elegant.

and I refer to them via boot cheatcodes.

From where? porteus.cfg is in the iso. ventoy grub2 menu? That lies on a separate partition and i don't see it in Windows.

[Ed_P]

I edited my last post.

Adding USB2 in front of each reference doesn't help. Ventoy and "old" are both USB2, ttbomk.

Why? If the changes.dat is an empty file. (You said it's empty) Why should dev be better?

Yes, it's empty when created but has your changes when rebooting, if it's found when rebooting, and it appears that's not the your case. And note, the drive for the ISO is /dev/.

I am not familiar with GRUB2

I am.

The ventoy menu is fine. I select porteus.iso an the Welcome Screen of porteus starts. All good.

Yes, the ventoy menu is find for booting the iso it's just not good at letting you boot it with the necessary boot/cheat codes to boot it the way you'd like thus making you rebuild the ISO over and over.

From where? porteus.cfg is in the iso. ventoy grub2 menu? That lies on a separate partition and i don't see it in Windows.

Really. Interesting. I'll bet you can see it when you boot to Porteus and look for it. The other option is the add on in the link I posted. And as you saw in the code I posted my changes are in the grub2 menu.

Added in 9 minutes 47 seconds:
A related thread: https://forum-porteus-org.translate.goo ... lem#p83025

[Portland Z]

Adding USB2 in front of each reference doesn't help. Ventoy and "old" are both USB2, ttbomk.

No ventoy is "new" or USB2 (porteus iso- Live). "Old" is USB1 (porteus installed.)

Have you understood, that i have porteus installed on USB stick (nr.1) with ext4. There everything runs fine. But I want to make an Iso of this stick to put it on an ventoy (exfat) USB stick (nr. 2)

Here I defined what is USB 1 and what ist USB 2.

Yes, it's empty when created but has your changes when rebooting, if it's found when rebooting, and it appears that's not the your case.

But it has only the changes, that i made since i first produced the empty changes. dat file. But it has not the changes i made in USB 1 b e f o r e I made the changes.dat file. It seems that you don't understand my problem. I want t r a n s f e r my personal settings from USB 1 to the iso of USB 2.

if it's found when rebooting, and it appears that's not the your case.

No. It is found. But it contains only the changes I made in the fresh system (USB2/new/ventoy). Not my personal settings of USB 1 (Old/Poteus installed).

"I'll bet you can see it when you boot to Porteus and look for it."

I look for it in Porteus. In Windows i see only the partition in a partition tool.

[Ed_P]

I want t r a n s f e r my personal settings from USB 1 to the iso of USB 2.

OK, that's what I suspected. For that situation you have 2 choices imho. 1. Copy the USB1 changes.dat file to the USB2 changes.dat file, ie overlaying the USB2 file with the USB1 file. 2. Copy the USB1 changes file to a file named .xzm, as guest, and then copy that file to the USB2 drive's modules folder.
cp changes.dat changes.dat.xzm

A situation that may cause a problem is changes that relate to the USB1's folder structure may not match the USB2's ISO structure thus not work. I encounter that when I switch between versions of Porteus. Things that worked in 4.0 don't all work in 5.0. Heck, things that work in 5.0 Cinnamon may not work in 5.0 KDE.

Something to consider, Ventoy may boot on a UEFI machine if the UEFI Secure Boot option is disabled.

If you can access the Ventoy's menu and can add a submenu to it pointing to a menu file on a drive you can see in Windows it would be more convenient for you to tweak.

What is the format of your ISO drive?

[Portland Z]

1. Copy the USB1 changes.dat file to the USB2 changes.dat file,

There is no USB1 changes.dat file, because it is ext4, and in ext4 I only need a folder named changes and there are all personal changes of my USB 1 stick. And when I make a changes.dat file in USB 1, the file is empty. So it is useless for the transfer of my personal settings to USB2.

2. Copy the USB1 changes file to a file named .xzm, as guest, and then copy that file to the USB2 drive's modules folder.
cp changes.dat changes.dat.xzm

I tried that already. But again. The changes.dat file is empty and when i convert it with cp changes.dat changes.dat.xzm,
the changes.dat.xzm must be empty too.

Things that worked in 4.0 don't all work in 5.0.

Yes, that was the discussion with Rapha. Porteus 4.0 works with ventoy. 5.0 only with Rapha's instructions.

Something to consider, Ventoy may boot on a UEFI machine if the UEFI Secure Boot option is disabled.

Yes. My secure boot is disabled, because i don't boot with UEFI, I boot in Legacy mode. Old bios.

What is the format of your ISO drive?

Ventoy uses exfat.

[Ed_P]

There is no USB1 changes.dat file, because it is ext4, and in ext4 I only need a folder named changes and there are all personal changes of my USB 1 stick.

Interesting. I've never used ext4. So what do you see in the changes folder? Can you post the output of a
ls -lghts command on the folder? When you boot the USB1 system can you use the Porteus Setting Center to try saving your Changes/Session/Settings to .xzm modules?

[Portland Z]

Can you post the output of a ls -lghts command on the folder?

it is a part of the folders in "File system":
/dev /etc /home /opt /root /run /tmp /usr /var /.cache /.wh..wh.orph /.wh..wh.pink and a text file .wh..wh. aufs.txt

When you boot the USB1 system can you use the Porteus Setting Center to try saving your Changes/Session/Settings to .xzm modules?

No this doesn't work. I tried to write it on different Drives and folders including the USBdrive. Every time there comes an error. "Drive is not writable" but it is writeable, when i use nemo. Saving a folder don't work, too. Only .dat files are possible, but they are empty.

I think i will simply change my personal settings once more, without transfering it. It is less work, than testing out again and again. And the iso starts faster than the installed version.

[Portland Z]

Finally it works the way I want.
I found another way to create an xzm module without Porteus Save Manager. In Nemo (USB1) I navigate to the "changes" directory, then right click on the directory and select "create xzm Module". With this the creation of an xzm module works. Then I copy the changes.xzm module into the modules folder and then create an iso image of the USB 1 system.

At first this did not work in ventoy. Apparently because changes.dat overwrites the changes.xzm module. Then I renamed the PorteusV folder in ventoy USB2 so that changes.dat can't be found anymore. And now it works. The old settings are all there. But new settings can't be saved without changes.dat. So in ventoy-USB2-Iso-porteus I created an empty changes.dat again and replaced the old changes.dat in the PorteusV folder on USB2. Now everything works as desired. My old settings are loaded and new settings are saved. In addition porteus loads from the iso in USB 2 very fast. My thanks to Ed_p and Rapha for their patience and knowledge.

[Ed_P]

Finally it works the way I want.

Can you post the output of a ls -lghts command on the folder?

it is a part of the folders in "File system":
/dev /etc /home /opt /root /run /tmp /usr /var /.cache /.wh..wh.orph /.wh..wh.pink and a text file .wh..wh. aufs.txt

So basically it is the file system I see in my /mnt/live/memory/changes folder. Interesting.

My thanks to Ed_p and Rapha for their patience and knowledge.

You're welcome but you're the one who figured how to do it.

Added in 2 hours 40 minutes 17 seconds:
Save Settings bug reported. Porteus-v5.0rc3 x86_64 bug reports (Post by Ed_P #84377)

[Portland Z]

Exactly.

[longpanda]

Hello, I don't know if it is a newbie Question. I have setup Porteus 5.0rc3 for my personal needs. Then I tried to make an iso of the OS. So I run make_iso.sh.
It works and the iso was made. But when i copy it to the ventoy partition an try to start it, after the bootmenu screen the booting fails.
First i thought the iso is bad. But then I tried different original isos of several desktops version 5.0rc3. They don't work too. But the Porteus 4.0 releases work all.
I tried LinuxWelt edition, cinnamon and xfce. Means all 5.0rc3 don't work, all 4.0 versions work.

The error message is: "Porteus data not found. You are using an unsupported boot device (SCSI or old PCMCIA). Workarround : Copy the directory /porteus from your boot device
to an ide/SAta disk, e.g. to /mnt/sda1/porteus or C:\porteus. Then try to boot again. Make sure That your boot parameters (cheatcodes) are correct."

I don't want to copy Porteus to an other disk. Is there a solution. I mean an other solution, than setting up a new OS with Porteus 4.0 ?

Please try latest ventoy-1.0.54

[Rapha_]

2 days ago ...

2021/10/12 --- 1.0.54 release
Support Porteus v5.0rc3

Thank you so much longpanda !
Now this version works without changing the ISO image, on bios legacy !